For those who were diagnosed late...

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I think I have been through all of those briefly at one time or another myself lol. Except substitute alien with just plain weird lol

My Mother used to call me a Martain..... I just sort of rolled with that until I hit 47 years of age and was told that I had Asperger's.

I was diagnosed at 21, before autism was brought up I just thought I had a few personality quirks. I've always known I had interests and inclinations that differed from the norm set by people in my environment. It never occurred to me that I might be fundamentally different in some way, I was just another person in the world.

Not much has changed really, now I'm just another person in the world, with autism.

Finding out you have ASD later in life is like Bruce Willis finding out he's dead in The Sixth Sense. The clues were there, but you didn't add them up.

Yeah most of these. Except with number 3, I thought that it was their problem.

Very Nice ...

I think I am just an example of one case that slipped through the cracks. I am 27 now, most of my doctors visits were in the 80s.

I have NO idea why they did not suggest autism, but my Mom said it was because she didn't think knowledge of autism (at least around HERE) was widespread in the 80s. The doctors put the blame on her mostly for my meltdowns and even my loss of speech--sounds awful to me that they could blame my loss of an entire language on my mother who was ALWAYS present and ALWAYS attentive, and a great mom. But, they did. Neither of my parents also had anything to do with my meltdowns (they came from sensory overload and a change in routine--obviously if they didn't know I was autistic, they wouldn't have understood why this was such a problem for me).

I was very clearly autistic, so I have no idea what took them so long. It angers me that not one person even suggested autism or even suggested that there really might be something seriously different (until I was almost 27). They told my parents that it was all just my personality, there was nothing more they could do. Well, if they had caught the autism, there was LOTS that they could do, and my life could have been different now. The system really failed me. I went to see my disability services advisor at my school and she said, "there is no way you were just diagnosed with autism last month? I've only spent ten minutes with you and I can already tell." She wasn't saying that to be rude, as far as I could tell, she was just agreeing with me on the failure of the doctors who evaluated me in my childhood and who could not even suggest autism. I don't have "mild Aspergers". I consider myself to be on the severe end of high-functioning ASD. If I was mild, I could understand more about being missed, but because of the AMOUNT of doctors I have seen, the fact that they KNEW my speech was delayed and then once I did speak, I regressed to being non-verbal again, and the fact that the rest of my symptoms are not mild, I truly do feel like they failed me.

I was diagnosed at 16, but I totally dismissed it up until I was 23. When I was 16 my mom had me go see a few different psychologists and all 3 of them said I had Aspergers. When they said it was a form of Autism I got really angry because I thought that they were just slapping an Autistic label on me because my brother was Autistic. I thought that there was no way I could have autism and so I never actually looked in to what Aspergers really was until I was 23.

Up until then I just assumed I was an outcast and had "quirks". I never once thought I might have had something. Even though I knew that I didn't quite fit in and felt as if I was an outsider, not once did I think that it had anything to do with autism. I don't remember what led me to do research on aspergers but I just remember feeling totally lost, confused, and looking back on all the events in my life and realizing that I did so many things that were NOT normal. Once I learned what it was.....it all made sense. When I was reading all of the traits of an Aspie I almost felt as if it was something I had written, listing all the things about myself.

I would call around and find someone who will, if that is what you have. A doctor shouldn't be able to say, "you have Aspergers but I'm not going to give you an official diagnosis" if they are qualified to diagnose it. I would call a private clinic, and specifically ask if they do autism/aspergers evaluations. If they say you have ASD, rather than "ASD tendancies" (people can have tendancies without having ASD), then you should demand a report for it--afterall you did pay for the evaluation.....

Nah, I don't mind. The diagnosis just makes me more confused since I don't really trust the methology; it was 100% based on interviewing me, and I certainly do not trust my memory to provide an impartial view of my childhood. So I'm tempted to reject the diagnosis as very unreliable and probably misleading. I suspect a youngish doctor specializing in neuropsychiatric issues would tend to overdiagnose AS when presented with adult patients with similar-looking psychiatric issues.

Well, no matter what labels you want to play with, I still feel like a failure, meh. I should have done better.

Hi littlelilly,

I just took the Aspie-quize and printed it off, I am going to look into if further. Id love to find a support group in my area. I think the main issue is that neither can give the aspie diagnosis and they all want to focus on the depression. The depression stems from the issues that I have, I don't know if a psychiatrist can officially diagnose me.

Hi. I was diagnosed with Aspergers just this month, 10 days shy of my 43rd birthday.
I had known (at least since my teen years) that I was "different", but never really knew exactly how. I just knew that everybody else seemed to "just know" what to do in a given situation, while I was usually clueless.
When I first got my diagnosis, I felt a bit skeptical, because I then thought all Aspies thought in pictures. Only after my counselor explained that every Aspie was wired differently did I fully accept my diagnosis. I am now comfortable with it.
By the way, littlelily613, Happy belated Birthday! You were born the same day and month as me, though not the same year!

I used to have complete meltdowns when I was a child. I'd yell my head off, slam my door, tell everyone to stay out. My mom just thought it was because my half-siblings were always tormenting me. And they were, but they were just the trigger. I didn't get along well with other kids. I think they thought I was selfish, but I was afraid of having them over and letting them play with my toys for fear they would break them. I couldn't deal with loss very well. I spent a lot of my time reading books to escape. I was very intelligent and the school wanted me to skip a grade, but my mother kept me where I was for fear of me being with people too old for me. I wish she hadn't. I would have much rather been out of there ASAP, because I fit in more in college.

In my tween and teen years, I felt like a real outcast. My friends would get mad at me, because I thought I was better than them or because I didn't behave like a "real" friend. I didn't understand what they were talking about, because, in my mind, I was a real friend and I never felt I was better than them. After being diagnosed, I realize that I wasn't expressing it like other people so they misunderstood. Adults always thought I was shy and introverted. I started thinking maybe I was a Starseed and that's why I was different inside.

As an adult, I wasn't able to hide behind the awkwardness of the teen years. Pushed into society and working, I realized that there was something else to this. I started searching for the source and it wasn't until this year when reading a blog that I realized what it was. I'm 28 years-old.

I thought I was mentally ill. I thought that somewhere along the way I must have got incredibly messed up psychologically, although I couldn't quite see how as my childhood, although far from perfect, wasn't that bad; lots of people had it far worse than me and they are not like me. I considered the possibility there had been some trauma very early on in my life that I couldn't remember but that had messed me up. I blamed my problems on depression, although I really knew there was more to it than that. Again, I had met other people with depression and they were nothing like me, they could interact 'normally' with other people. I looked at so many self-help books and psychology books hoping to find the answer to why I am the way that I am. I also saw lots of different counsellors over the years and did a lot of self-obsessing and looking inwards in the hope that if I dug deep enough I might eventually find the answer. Eventually I did find a mention of AS in a magazine.

I also felt deep down that I was mad. I have very often been called 'mad' 'weird' 'crazy', 'nutter' etc. and that became my self-identity. I thought so many people couldn't all be wrong, they must have a point. I was also labelled quiet and shy, and that became my identity too. Ever since I started school I had known I wasn't normal. I had always felt there was something very wrong with me. I also suspected that everybody except me knew what was 'wrong' with me and that the whole world was keeping it a secret from me because it was something so bad that nobody could tell me. Of all the professionals I saw, not one of them picked up on what the problem really was. If I hadn't been the one to finally pick up on it, I don't know if anybody else ever would have. I was finally diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at the age of 42.

I was diagnosed last year, at 28, but it came completely out of the blue. My entire life I couldn't understand why I screw up so much. Every job I ever had, relationships, most friendships. I was always struggling to be independent, but found it impossible no matter how hard I worked at it. I was randomly reading about Autism (my oldest son is autistic), when I stumbled upon information on Aspergers. Everything I read hit me pretty hard, and I took some online tests and such and then talked to my ex-wife about the possibility that I might have it. A week later the doctor suggests my youngest son may have Aspergers, without anyone mentioning anything, and also it was very likely that one of his parents have it as well, so naturally I got tested for it. I like knowing I have it, and it has helped with depression as well, because now I don't feel like a victim in my own life.

One of my daughters was "off" from day one, and luckily I had a friend/boss who had an autistic son 10 years older. So I could ask her "Hey, did your son ever do this?" And a lot of her responses were "Yeah, he did" or "No, but someone I know has an autistic kid who did that." We started checking with our paediatrician at age 2, but didn't get a formal diagnosis until age 5 (1997-2000). I think they diagnose earlier now.

Anyhow, we start reading all sorts of books etc. to educate ourselves, and all the books I read, I kept seeing myself in. I haven't been officially diagnosed, but sometime in the last few years (2005-ish?) I found and took Simon Baron-Cohen's online Adult Asperger Assessment, and "passed" with flying colours. I'm 47 now, so call it 42 when that happened.

My parents knew something was up with me from a very early age. At age 6, I attended the University of Ottawa's Child Study Centre. (Imagine a school run by profs and grad students from the Education and Psychology faculties.) I kicked butt on their many IQ tests, but this being 1969-70, they had no clue about the autism spectrum (other than the extreme end of it, I suppose). They handed me back to my parents saying, basically, "He's bright as hell, he'll probably turn out to be neurotic, good luck!"

I ALWAYS knew something was "wrong" with me. Family of origin was hell, 'cause my parents sure didn't understand me, nor my siblings, and it was a very emotionally-sterile environment (so it's not like I could pick up any cues from my parents). School from grades 5-9 was hell, because I was bullied horribly, and it seemed like everything I did or said became the subject of ridicule. High school was horrible, because even though the bullying mostly stopped, it's not like I had a lot of friends. I got married early (long story), and that was hell, because she saw my AS-related deficits as me "just being lazy" or stupid or what have you. After that marriage ended, I got married again, and this marriage has lasted longer, but with a lot of hell related to emotional misunderstandings, jobs I've lost, ways in which I've hurt my wife (emotionally etc., never physically) where I didn't even really know that what I was doing would be hurtful, etc. etc.

I wish they'd known in 1969 what they knew about ASD in 2009. Sigh. Oh well.

Oh, no official diagnosis yet, because in British Columbia their attitude was "Well, we have no services for autistic adults, so we don't bother doing adult diagnoses." Now that I'm living in the US, I'm sure I could get a formal diagnosis, for example at UCLA (we live about an hour outside of Los Angeles proper) ... if I have $4400 to spare, since my insurance probably doesn't cover it. It's not worth it at this point.